Monday, March 30, 2015

We're AI'ing a few groups here & there, still feeding cows and taking time in the afternoons to have some fun. My laundry is caught up, and floors got vacuumed and I made it to the grocery store - which is a great feeling to head into a new week with.

We branded again with the Raymond family in Pilot Rock yesterday - anyone care to take a guess how many pictures I took?

Friday, March 27, 2015

We got some much needed & wished for rain, and since this is Eastern Oregon - a bit of wind to go along with it. The guys worked really hard to get calves branded in between the drops, and we're looking forward to breeding some cows & helping the Raymond crew brand again on Saturday.

The Hunter brothers are making SERIOUS progress on the house and this week I realized I needed to get my butt in gear on picking some items...but more about that below.

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1. The House.

The Hunter brothers having been hustling this week! The drywall is all down, new studs have been placed, the floor that was an 1 1/2'' off at the south end of the room has been leveled, and the bathroom has been laid out. They also ripped out the final existing wall between the old mudroom and the new addition, and laid down a new plywood base floor in the bedroom. And I'm sure there is a lot more that has been done that I don't understand but it sure looks like things are coming together.

We had one small hiccup with the closet placements that we caught early, and after robbing some space in the mudroom I think we came up with an option that will still let us have ample closet space, and more than 20'' of walkway between our bed and the closet doors. :)

2. Tile and such.

We choose the flooring we're going to use this week! After debating about using porcelain tile, or a new vinyl plank tile with ceramic beading, we ending up choosing the Engage snap plank tiles that look like wood. The style we chose is textured like wood, is warm underfoot, has a lifetime residential warranty, is rated for commercial use, and is waterproof.

I had brought home a few samples in various colors to see what looked best next to our cabinets - since we're also putting the flooring in the kitchen and the cabinets are staying. I had thought that Clint would like a lighter color than the one I liked, but when he came home and I asked him his opinion it turned out that we both liked the same one.

And that is awesome sauce.

So the planks are being ordered, and as soon as they're ready for them - they'll be installed!

Now I'm just trying to figure out paint colors.

3. Last thing about the house. Promise.At least for this week. ;)

I went to Tri-Cities yesterday to pick out the cultured marble for the shower - you can't imagine how excited I am for this - I think it's going to be SO easy to clean!!!.

The Hunter Brothers recommended Columbia Cultured Marble for the shower, and basically you go up and pick a color and texture. They have a beautiful product that looks like granite, but it's about 40% more than their marble product so we're going for the marble look. They custom blend the colors you choose and mold it into a shower and pan that fits exactly into the space you want. I chose the greenish color above called "Khaki" and then it will have the white (shown) and "Dark Mexican Sand" (the tan base shown behind it) blended in to make the "marble" effect. I think it'll look good with our plank tiles (shown behind the marble tiles) in the bathroom and hopefully will be a classic look that will look nice for many years.

The best part of using this product?

There aren't any seams!!!

Which means it is super easy to clean. They actually just recommend a spray of daily shower cleaner every other day, and a rinse off the next morning. Plus the shower door comes with a 10 year guarantee against water spotting - and if you've been to our house (which is right next to the feedlot) you know we have hard water that spots on everything, so I'm really looking forward to this feature!

4. Branding at Double M

Photo Credit: EJ Harris, EO

The guys have been branding calves all week at the ranch, and are just about done. The East Oregonian (our local paper) was out yesterday and wrote a neat article about branding.

I was shopping for groceries on Tuesday after work (because all we had in the house was a block of cheese, corn tortillas and a few cans of Coors Original in the fridge) and as I was in line to check out I thought;

"Well crap, I meant to pick up a bundle of daffodils. But I don't want to get out of line."

So I checked out, drove home and walked in the house to see these:

Lindsay had stopped by earlier and droppped them off and they made my day.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

We AI about 75% of the cow herd at Double M, using bulls in Genex's Progeny Test. This just means that we use unproven or young bulls, and breed them to cows along with a reference or proven sire. We keep data on all of the calves, and turn that into Genex. Because we're mating across a large population, and using a reference sire, Genex gets a good cross section of data and they can see if a bull will work for their lineup.

Last year the bulls we used didn't end up making it into the lineup, so I didn't post too much about them here on the blog.

But this year is going to be a different story, I think!

The cows at Double M are kept in separate groups, and are grouped by age. In the spring cows, the H's are replacement heifers, the R's are 2 year old cows having their 2nd calf (along with a few high maintenance 3 year olds) and then the older cows get sorted into the "big bunch" and the "small bunch". Clint calves the R's and H's, and Jack calves the big and small bunches. (Mike also has a group he calves at his place, and I think they're called the Taylor bunch.)

I posted about the McCoy calves here - and they just keep getting better. They branded the H's a week ago, and Clint thought that the McCoy's looked even better than the Thunder's. Who knows what they'll look like at weaning, but if you're looking for a heifer bull to use this year - both of us would highly recommend McCoy.

Today I thought I'd post a few pictures of calves from the cows over at Jack's in the big bunch. For convenience, I sorted them by sire below. Jack keeps his own calving book, so I don't know any of the calving data, but from talking with him I don't think he had any significant problems tied to birth weight. All of the calves pictured below had just been branded, and were 7 weeks old when I pictured them at the beginning of this month. The cowherd here is not registered, but records are kept like a purebred herd and the cows are primarily Angus/Sim-Angus bred. This group was also still on a full feeding of long hay when I took these pictures.

The guy's favorite progeny are the calves out of Dominance.

I like the Dominance calves a lot too, but I'm still kind of partial to the Insight calves.

I think the main difference is the Dominance calves have the edge in stoutness/weight and the Insight calves are probably just a tick better phenotypically.

Dominance Calves:

Insight Calves:

The Chisum calves are good too - and from what we've seen with Chisum calves in the past is that they really start to put on the pounds as they get closer to weaning. (See my post about the progeny test we did with Chisum and Full Power in the 2013 fall cows here and here.) He may not sire the calves with the prettiest fronts, but if you're a cow calf guy who sells pounds at weaning time, Chisum is definitely a bull to consider.

Chisum Calves:

Envision Calves:

I didn't get a lot of pictures of the Envision calves. I think most of them are in a different group, but because of the way cows got sorted after breeding, there were a few in the bunch I pictured. They're long bodied, but not quite as flashy or commanding as the Insight and Dominance calves.

If you're wanting to use AI in your program but just don't know how to get started - or have questions about the bulls mentioned above, we'd love to visit with you. Genex's Chuteside Service makes it easy to stand back, and let a qualified crew come in and take care of your AI'ing. You can tailor the level of involvement from a little to a lot, depending on your desire.

If you want, leave a comment in this post and we'll be sure to answer any questions you have. Or you can send an email using the contact tab here.

We want you to be successful with your cows & calves - and AI'ing is a great way to create that success. With AI, we've experienced not only lower dystocia and problems at calving, but increased weaning weights and quality of calves.

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